Annual Review for Tenure: My Planning Process
Summer 2020: really excited about prepping for my 5th year tenure review (ha). Photo taken by Ellie.
Just a quick note before you head into the blog post. Are you an academic who is trying to figure out how to plan for your next tenure review? My planning course, plan(it)*, can help support you during the process. Check out the link for more info.
I realize that there's lots of variability in the tenure review process from university to university. However, I thought I'd share the general process I've been following for prepping for my 5th (and final) annual tenure review. At my institution, we have annual reviews (submitted in fall), a cumulative third year review (submitted in spring), and then the tenure review (submitted in the fall of year 6). So the annual review is something I've done a few times before.
When I submitted my 4th year tenure review, I created a step by step list of everything that needed to happen for submission. Once it was submitted I saved the list (originally in Dynalist, now it's in Notion). For my 5th year review I duplicated the steps and voila, had a plan for submission.
At the beginning of this summer I mapped out a very loose timeline for working on my materials based on (1) the basic steps involved, (2) what was already on my calendar for the summer and early fall, (3) how much time I wanted to work on it, (4) when my materials were due (early October), and (5) when I wanted to have my annual review packet ready to go (three days before was enough wiggle room for me). Based on this info I decided to spend an hour a week during August and September prepping everything.
Here are the annual review materials that I’m updating
CV
Personal narrative: essentially writing about the past year and touching on research, teaching, and service. I keep the same structure from previous years and update with information from the prior year.
Scholarly agenda: a road map for my research. It doesn't need a massive overhaul each year, just updates, so after the first review it gets a lot easier (and I’d recommend using your job search materials to get you started on the first one).
Teaching artifact: could include evaluations, an annotated syllabi, a creative assignment, etc.
Here are the steps that I'm working through to submit my annual review
Week 1
create a detailed plan for submission based on my 4th year review steps, breaking the steps into tasks that can be done in an hour or less
put my plan in my calendar.
Week 2
update CV (specifically focused on funding info)
review my list of everything I've done since the 4th year review (I have a tenure list I keep in Notion)
decide what to highlight in my personal narrative for teaching, research, and service
Week 3
update CV (specifically focused on comparing 4th year review CV and adding in/highlighting new things)
review winter/spring teaching evaluations
decide which course’s evaluations to highlight
put evaluations in tenure folder
Week 4
free write updates for personal narrative based on what I want to highlight from week 2
Week 5
review scholarly agenda
make notes about what to edit
make edits
Week 6
edit personal narrative document
Week 7
finalize personal narrative document
Week 8
finalize scholarly agenda document
Week 9
finalize CV
organize tenure folder
update/finalize cover letter and table of contents
SUBMIT materials!
As I’m writing this I'm about to head into week 4, free writing updates for my personal narrative, so almost half way through this process. Overall, it feels doable and not overwhelming and I’m confident it’ll get done, even with the beginning of fall term happening in September.
In summary, here are the general steps you can take to get your annual tenure reviews prepped and ready to go.
Figure out when your materials are due and when you'd like to have them ready to go by.
Identify all of the steps you're going to have to take to submit your materials.
Estimate how long each of these steps is going to take you.
Create a plan based on the time you have to submit it.
Put all the steps of your plan on your calendar.
Do what your calendar says!